


Your Best Friend

by Duckface



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-04
Updated: 2015-11-04
Packaged: 2018-04-29 17:49:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5137043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duckface/pseuds/Duckface
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My crack at who Chara was before the fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Best Friend

The night stretched and tangled, and no matter how carefully they picked at the hard knot of sleep, it would not come loose. Their bedroom in the blueness of its shadows would not fade, and tossing and turning would not breathe life into their dead pillow or ease the itchiness of their pajamas. Their longing for tomorrow was too much for time itself to bear – if they could only want a little _less_ , just for a moment, they were sure it would pick up its burden and struggle on, tugging the sun into the sky, but there was no end to the wanting. They could want like the weight of a millstone, like the heat of a bonfire, like the cold distance between the stars. Or that was the story they told themself. They were proud of their wanting – and it was only in a moment of pride, when they were preoccupied in the telling, that sleep stole past them, and the sun rose like the crack of a rifle and flooded the room with gold.

He was coming back. Today. It was today!

They tore the covers away and lolloped across the bed. Scrambled on all fours to the dresser, too excited to waste even a second. The outfit they had chosen a week before was laid out where they had left it. On went the brown corduroys, which hissed like a snake when they walked and gathered little bursts of static which made their hands sparkle in the dark. And the sweater with the stripe, the stripe that followed. Soft like everywhere, solid like the column of his spine, and sleeves full of secrets. Their mother thought it was too big for them, but their mother didn’t know how big they really were. Wizards need robes. Heroes need symbols. The stripe is a promise and a coat of arms. And they liked the way it moved when he hugged them. There was hardly a decision left to be made. Everything would be as they imagined, from now, for as long as time took.

Their mother called, and they answered, vaulting the bannister and running down the stairs. Up bright and early and ready for breakfast with no anger in their face, for the first time in weeks. And mom had made pancakes, which helped. They did the thing where mom flipped the cakes in the air with a spatula and they had to move around to try to catch them on a plate, and they were able to enjoy the game, even through the storm of impatience in their head. They had planned for this, knew that they wouldn’t be able to leave to see him right away. Adults didn’t understand the urgency of these things, but that was just the way life worked. And Chara did like pancakes.

They had been certain that he was wrong to go traveling with his family. There was no need for it, but the adults didn’t understand what was important, and talking to them was like arguing with the weather. When he had told Chara he was going away, Chara told him that it wasn’t right for him to leave, that the two of them were on the verge of something, something incredible. But his parents had called and he had gone to them, and Chara had felt the failure of their will, and it hurt like a knife would hurt. It took them weeks to get through it, weeks of slammed doors and cruel jokes. But in the end of course it had turned out for the best. The world had answered their deeper wish, and it had taken them this unimaginable gap of time, _a full month apart_ , to see it.

If he had not gone away, Chara would never have learned what the two of them needed to do.

When the pancakes were all gone and the skillet was cleared away, Chara brought the syrupy dishes to the sink without even having to be told, which impressed their mother deeply. She seemed relieved about something, or maybe just worried with a new kind of worry – possibly? It was hard to tell what adults were thinking at the best of times, and Chara had other priorities. They needed to get out to the toolshed to retrieve their stash of treasures, and they needed a way to carry them without attracting attention. The corduroys had deep pockets. The way he would look, when they brought them out and showed them to him, one by one… it felt wrong, particularly, to keep the locket hidden, but the force of his surprise would be greater, would lift them higher, if they didn’t show him right away. They could feel his excitement already, could feel it in their body like a field of energy, like a line of pure power shooting from the depths of their sacrum into the infinite sky. They could feel all the eyes in their body opening, straining to see his face. And they were drying the dishes. Years were passing, forests were dying, whole villages rising and crumbling into dust in the space of a single swipe of the dishrag. Time was misbehaving again. Chara would have to do something about that.  

They told themselves this story: swift Chara ran out the back while mom looked for the keys. Clever Chara found the spare key under the ceramic toad. Undid the padlock. Picked their way to the back of the shed, weaving between rusting rakes and old sacks of bone meal. Thoughtful and resourceful Chara found the giant terracotta flowerpot in the back corner, the one nobody ever used, so it was thick with cobwebs and moist with life underneath, looked beneath a scrap of tarpaper and under a pile of old rags. Chara picked up: what they had found buried in the garden. Chara picked up: what they had found beneath the cushion of their grandfather’s armchair. Chara picked up: what they had found inside themself, finally, at the end of a long string, on a fishhook floating in the quiet sea of their heart, the words, written in code and in code and in code on a long thin strip of paper. Took them all and stuffed sleeve and pocket and ran to their mother, waiting in the car.

But the final dish was done! The final dish was done and yet their mother was not waiting in the car, was not running the engine and honking the horn. Surely – it was inconceivable that she was not even _aware_ of the need – but that was other people, wasn’t it? Astoundingly blind, astoundingly selfish. Their sensory receptors corroded, the depths of their feeling a murky shadow of Chara’s clarity. When they were sent to the school for the first time, clinging to their mother and shouting – don’t leave me with these things! – these animals with human faces, these creatures without language that hit and bit and kicked at random, that couldn’t understand – it shouldn’t have surprised anyone, what happened. Why the teacher wouldn’t let them come back, which was fine, was perfect, in fact. Anything was better than going back. But that was before they met him, of course.

They met him at the harvest festival. A blond boy in a striped sweater, holding sway over a whole group of children, jumping and boasting and shouting as they egged him on. Impossibly present, and impossibly sweet, a hazy vagueness in his blue eyes, and a riot of snaggleteeth when he smiled. Arms up, wrists cocked to catch the energy of the sky, like he _knew._

“I’m the champion of the world!”, he’d bellowed.

And Chara had said, “No. You’re not.”

And they were never apart, after that, never ever.

The kids who’d been his followers never seemed to come around these days, but that was fine – there wasn’t enough time in the world for the two of them to be finished with each other. And it was good that there wouldn’t be anyone else to greet him on his return, to distract him. With a supreme effort of will, Chara let the grip of their impatience loose a little, let a little trickle of time run past. He wasn’t going anywhere, after all. Where else could he go but to Chara, who was the polestar, and magnetic north.

Chara was in the car, now. Their mother was saying something, but the words weren’t heavy enough to pierce the story they were telling themself. The vibration of the engine was the vibration of the world was the vibration of each strand of wandering time. Vibration is a string and a string can have a knot. A knot can be made or unmade. A snarl is a yawn. An abyss shudders because it is the truest vibration, the beat of a tangled heart against its tensions. The knife rattled against their leg. The locket clung coolly to their arm, pinioned between arm and flank in the depths of their sleeve. The words slept in their fist, going damp and pale with sweat. It was a short drive and took no time, but Chara had budgeted less than no time, and was straining and squirming against their seat belt. Their mother looked over with a face as devoid of meaning as a cloudy sky. At the last minute, of course, of course the worry would set in, twisting in their gut. Everything inside them bunched together, a corkscrew driving into something dark and hard. What if he hadn’t come back? What if he was sick? What if something had changed – if he’d forgotten about Chara, forgotten about everything? What if he’d made a new friend?

\--

But he was outside the house waiting. Chara tore open the car door and closed the distance between them at a pace that bewildered the air itself. All the eyes in Chara’s body opened up again, wider and wider, until the space between the eyes was light, and the eyes were light, and there was nothing but the feeling of his body, and of his arms around them.

The adults went into the kitchen to talk. The things Chara needed to tell him were better told at night, away from even the possibility of overhearing, but there was no question of waiting at this point. They pulled him into the living room and told him everything, in a hot, fast whisper that burned as it came out. They told him that they had been doing it wrong all this time, and that they had finally discovered the truth of the ritual, and then they told him exactly what was going to happen, if they had the courage, and then they showed him the locket. And if there was something off about his excitement – if there was a little cloud drifting in the sky that shone out of him – the brilliance of his presence was enough to drown it out. Chara was not good with faces, or with noticing.

They were to walk together to the field of yellow flowers in the forest behind the school. It was going to happen now. Their mothers would welcome the chance to catch up while they played together. Nobody would be there at this hour on a weekend. On the way, they played pretend. He had found a book on medieval weaponry while he’d been away and was eager to work all the new details he’d learned into the universe they shared together. He became the knight Sir Khorus and was instantly outfitted with a bewildering array of fancy polearms. Chara the sneaky hedge wizard laughed and laughed and would not let go of his hand.

They were dueling superheroes by the time they made it to the school, trading energy bolts back and forth across the empty playground. Space soldiers by the time they entered the woods. A firefight ensued, but Chara called a truce, only to snare him in an energy web when his guard was down. Hopelessly snarled, the battery of his exo-suit depleted, he collapsed in the flowers. It was a practiced collapse. It was one of the things Chara loved about him – he made an excellent victor but an even more excellent victim, and he was very good at dying. Chara wished sometimes that he was as creative an assailant as he was in his hopeless last stands and heroic defeats, because they felt underpracticed at dying, and always enjoyed the feeling of landing splayed in a corner, insides shattered by a lucky shot. But the two of them had their rhythm, and it was a good rhythm. He struggled fitfully as Chara bent over him, smiling.

His breathing changed when he saw the knife.

“The web holds you,” Chara said. “It’s draining your life energy. Your armor is melting off.”

He said nothing.

Chara took the bottom of his shirt in one hand and pulled. He started to say something, stopped. Pulled it over his head.

“New game,” Chara said.

They took the piece of paper with the words on it out of their pocket and held it out.

“This is what I was talking about. The spell I was talking about. It’s how I feel about you. The whole thing is in here.”

He reached up and took it. The lines on the paper weren’t even letters anymore. Chara had made up the code and the code and the code, but they knew he would be able to read it, because the two of them were the same. He nodded and handed it back.

Chara held the words in the palm of their hand until the paper turned red. The knife was red already.

He stared.

“I have a stripe,” Chara said. They lifted their shirt and showed him.

They ran a careful finger down their sternum. Red.

“You’ll have a stripe too. It’s our armor and our magic. Forever.”

Chara brought the knife.

“No,” he said.

Chara stopped for a moment. New game? That was fine.

“You have no choice. Your power is drained, and your spells are useless. You will be initiated into the tribe of darkness. Kin to the dark lord himself.”

Chara brought the knife again.

“No,” he said. “Stop it.”

“You are powerless to resist. Your soul will be mine forever.”

“No, really,” he said. “Stop it. This is dumb. I’m not playing anymore.”

He sat up and reached for his shirt.

\--

The words were meant to be watered with the blood of two children. It was a better story and more satisfying than just one. The strip of paper shut inside Chara’s locket had only the blood of one child.

The thing that could not be forgiven was what his face had done. After everything was over, the way it stopped being the face of Chara’s best friend, and instead became the face of a child. Another stupid child who couldn’t understand, leaking tears, leaking snot. The incredible mistake Chara had made, trusting something like that. That was the thing, ultimately, that they would not be able to explain, if they went back: not the actions they had taken, which felt unimportant, but the fact that they had allowed so much of themselves to become entangled with someone who wasn’t real. Their loneliness had made them stupid, and the stupidity had cost them. The grown-ups wouldn’t understand. Chara would not go back.

There were two things they could do, now. One of them would complete the spell, but it would mean giving up on the idea that there was anyone else in this world who was real, an idea which seemed more frightening than death, and more cowardly than the act of dying. That feeling of completeness, that spire of energy shooting up into the heavens – that had not been a figment of their imagination. There was somebody, somewhere, who could feel the same things. Someone with that softness, that intelligence. Someone who knew the real magic.

Chara put one foot in front of the other. For once, time cooperated. It danced alongside them, flew past in billows, rained down in torrents. Shimmering in its threads, it ate distance, corrupted space, flew beneath their arms and under their feet until it was time itself they walked on, crawled on, slid down, swam through, shone through, until laughing, crying, trembling, screaming, calling for help or calling for nothing were all one thing, pulled flat and meaningless by the erosion of years. Chara followed the slope of time’s prism, hunting for the snarl at its heart, and came to rest, at last, in the shadow of Mt. Ebott.


End file.
